CHAPTER I
The Tsarevitch and Afrossinia were boating one summer moonlight night, on the Gulf of Naples.
The very soul of Alexis was thrilled by the harmony around him; harmony in the tremor of the moon’s golden train which fell upon the water, a blazing path reaching from Posilippo across to the very brink of the horizon; harmony in the murmur of the sea, and the light breeze which carried, together with the salt freshness of the sea air, sweet perfume from the shores of Sorrento, clad in lemon and orange groves; harmony in the silvery azure outlines of Mount Vesuvius, wrapped in luminous mist, emitting a white smoke and, from time to time, flaring up like dying embers on an altar consecrated to the gods; the gods who had died, who had risen again, and again had expired.
“Dearest one, see how lovely this is,” whispered the Tsarevitch.
Afrossinia looked round her with the same placid indifference as if the scene were the Neva and the Peter and Paul fortress.
“Yes, it is warm; though we are on the water we don’t seem to feel the damp,” she replied with a suppressed yawn.
He closed his eyes, and before him rose a vision of a room in Viasemski’s house in Petersburg; it was a spring evening, slanting rays of the setting sun flooded the room; the servant girl Afrossinia, in a well tucked-up skirt and barefooted, bending low over her work, scrubbing the floor. She is a simple peasant girl, one of those whom village lads call as “firm, plump and white as a well-washed turnip.” Yet sometimes looking at her he would recall an ancient Dutch picture he had seen in his father’s collection at Peterhof, “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” a naked red-haired witch, goat-legged with split hoofs like a faun. In the face of Afrossinia with its too full lips, its slightly turned up nose, its large, lucid, languishing, almond-shaped eyes, there was something wild, innocently shameless, almost goat-like. To his mind would come the sayings of old writers about the fatal fascination of women: Sin began with woman, and through her we all die; to fall into her arms in love is to fall into the fire. He could not tell how it happened, but he loved her almost at first sight with a rude tender love, strong as death.
Here, on the Gulf of Naples she had remained the same Afrossinia as of old; here she was cracking with her teeth little nuts and spitting the shells in the silvered waves, just as she used to crack sunflower seeds in Petersburg, sitting in the kitchen among her fellow-servants on feast-days. Only now, dressed in the French fashion with beauty spots, and “robe ronde,” she appeared yet more alluring and innocently shameless. No wonder she was stared at by the two soldiers and even by the elegant Count Esterhazy himself, who always escorted the Tsarevitch on all his expeditions from the St. Elmo fortress. Alexis loathed these leers of men, ever drawn to her like flies to honey.
“How now, Æsop, are you tired of this life, and longing to get home?” she asked in a drawling sing-song voice, turning to her neighbour, a tiny, ugly creature, a naval apprentice, Alexis Yourov—Æsop was only his nickname.
“Ah, Mistress Afrossinia, I find life here very hard. The instruction is so difficult that we might well spend all the rest of our life in trying to master it, and then without success. One is really baffled to know where to begin first, the language or the sciences. In Venice our lads, my messmates, are positively starving to death; their allowance is only three kopecks a day; and really they have been so neglected that they have neither drink nor meat, nor any clothes left, but walk about the streets in disgusting fashion, half in rags! We are left here like mere cattle. But my chief complaint is, that I can’t stand the sea, it makes me sick. I am not a seafaring man. It will be my death, unless some one takes pity on me. I would gladly walk back to Petersburg to escape the sea. I would rather beg my way than go by water—may it please his Majesty!”
“Ah, my friend, you will only drop from the frying pan into the fire. You won’t escape your dose of the lash at Petersburg for deserting your apprenticeship,” remarked the Tsarevitch.
“A bad job, Æsop. What will become of you, poor orphan? Where will you go?” asked Afrossinia.
“What choice is left for me? I must either go hang myself, or become a monk on Mount Athos!”
Alexis gazed at him with compassion; he involuntarily compared his own lot with that of the sailor deserter.
“Never mind, friend, we may yet, with God’s help, happily return to old Russia,” he said with a kindly smile.
They had now passed out of the golden stream of moonlight and were returning to the dark shore. Here at the foot of a hill stood an abandoned villa, built during the Renaissance period, on the ruins of an ancient Venus temple.
Along both sides of the half-ruined steps, which led down to the sea, gigantic cypresses were ranged like torch-bearers at a funeral. Their entwined tips, continually caught by the wind from the sea, remained bent like heads drooping in sorrow. White statues of gods gleamed spectre-like in the dark shade. And the fountain jet seemed also a pale spectre. In the laurel thickets were shining glow-worms, like funeral tapers. The heavy scent of the magnolias recalled the smell of balsam used for anointing dead bodies. A peacock in the villa, roused by the voices and splashing of oars, strutted out on the steps, opening his tail, and shimmered in the moonlight with dim iridescence, a fan set with gems. Plaintive cries of the peahens sounded like piercing wails of mourners. The waters of the fountain, trickling from an overhanging rock along the thin, hair-like grass, fell into the sea, drop after drop like silent tears, as though a nymph was weeping in the cave, bewailing her sisters. All this sad villa brought to mind some dark Elysium, the subterranean grove of shadows, the burial ground of dead gods; of gods who had died, who had risen again, and again had died.
“Could you believe it, gracious mistress, it is well nigh three years since I had a vapour bath!” continued Æsop.
“Ah! could I but have a few fresh birch twigs and then some cherry honey after the bath,” sighed Afrossinia.
“Tears almost rise to my eyes when drinking the sour stuff of this place, and remember our vodka,” moaned Æsop.
“And some pressed caviar!” echoed Afrossinia.
“And salt sturgeon!”
“And smelt from the White Lake!”
Thus they went on, aggravating their regrets. The Tsarevitch listened to them, while looking at the villa and involuntarily smiled. The contrast seemed so strange between these prosaic dreams and the fantastic reality.
Another boat was gliding along the fairy path of the sea, leaving a black trace in the quivering gold. The sound of a mandoline and a song sung by a young girl’s voice was wafted across the water.
Quant’ è bella giovinezza,
Che si fugge tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;
Di doman non c’è certezza!
This love song had been composed by Lorenzo di Medici Il Magnifico, for the triumphant procession of Bacchus and Ariadne at Florentine festivities. It sounded the short-lived joy of the Renaissance, and infinite sorrow for its loss. The Tsarevitch listened, unable to make out its meaning, yet the music filled his soul with sweet melancholy.
Fair fleeting youth must snatch at happiness.
He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.
“And now, Mistress, a Russian song!” begged Æsop.
He meant to go down on his knees, but floundered and just escaped tumbling into the water. He was not over steady on his feet, owing to the continual sipping of the sour wine from a bottle, which he modestly tried to conceal under the lapel of his coat. One of the oarsmen, a half-naked, fine, dark fellow seemed to understand his request, for he smiled at Afrossinia, beckoned Æsop and handed him a guitar. The latter started jingling on it as on some three-stringed balalaïka.
Afrossinia smiled, glanced at the Tsarevitch and suddenly began her song in a loud, slightly shrieking voice, just as she used to sing in the choir on dusky spring evenings near the birch grove which overshadowed the banks of the river. The shores of Naples, antique Parthenope, resounded with the unwonted alien strains:—
“Oh my pretty balcony, newly
Built with maple tree, latticed fair!”
Infinite yearning for the past—the distant—breathed in the Italian song:—
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;
Di doman non c’è certezza.
Infinite desire for the future breathed in the Russian:—
Fly my falcon fair, far away from here,
To that country dear, which was once mine own!
Both songs, the known and the unknown, mingled in one. The Tsarevitch could hardly restrain his tears; never yet had he loved Russia so dearly as now. But he loved it with a new, all-embracing love as part of Europe, he loved the foreign country as his own. And this love for his own country mingled harmoniously with his love for the foreign one, like the two songs over the water.